Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin listens to a question during a news conference, in Ottawa on Dec. 15, 2017.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Peter MacKay is a former Canadian attorney-general, justice minister, foreign affairs minister and defence minister. He is currently a lawyer and advocate for the anti-corruption non-profit Integrity Initiatives International.
Western democratic values are under siege. A cabal of revisionist actors including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea (a group unofficially known by some as the CRINKs) are advancing their efforts to deliberately disrupt and undermine security and economic freedom. Even the United States seems increasingly incapable – or unwilling – to keep a lid on the rising chaos that threatens our way of life.
Canadians crave stability and sanity amid all this turbulence. These times call for institutions and individuals whose integrity and force of personality are beyond reproach, and whose reassuring resilience makes them uniquely positioned to help us navigate stormy waters at home and abroad.
For a long time, Canadians have counted the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin as such a figure. Though she is not without her detractors, it is impossible to deny her stellar 28 years of service on the Supreme Court of Canada – including 18 years as our longest-serving chief justice – presiding over some of our country’s most complex and contentious legal issues. She stands as a Canadian paragon of influence and respect who is in a category of one when it comes to jurists.
Yet in 2018, mere months after her mandatory retirement from the pinnacle of a legal career, she accepted an appointment as a non-permanent Judge of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal.
This is hardly a place for a Canadian of her standing.
Despite the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, it would have still been reasonable just a few years ago to believe that Ms. McLachlin could help prevent the rollback of freedoms there, or play a role in at least temporarily stemming the tide of authoritarianism. For many Canadians, there was a broader hope that our relationship with China could be improved, and that Hong Kong’s evolution after 99 years of steady inheritance of the British legal system would endure. Sadly, Beijing’s malfeasance – reported electoral interference, hostage diplomacy against Canadians, appalling human rights abuses, and imperial aggression against China’s neighbours and perceived adversaries – has proven that any optimism was naive.
The world has since witnessed the demise of the one-country-two-systems bargain, and the erosion of tolerance and distaste for dissent that has emerged in Hong Kong is rapidly making its legal system into something brutal, unfair and unaccountable, of the sort that is favoured by China’s totalitarian regime. Ms. McLachlin’s continued participation in that system lends it legitimacy.
The case of 76-year-old Jimmy Lai is a glaring example of Hong Kong’s shift away from basic rights and due process. A well-known publisher, businessman and activist, Mr. Lai was arrested more than 1,000 days ago on trumped-up charges, and accused of breaching national-security laws, simply for upholding one of the tenets of democracy: a free press. His trial, which has just begun, could lead to him spending the rest of his life in prison.
Most Western countries have rightly condemned this as a travesty. Canada’s House of Commons unanimously called for Mr. Lai’s release; Britain, where he holds citizenship, has tried high-level diplomatic interventions. No amount of diplomatic influence or judicial guidance, however, will deter Beijing from using a likely rigged process to make an example of Mr. Lai.
Yet Ms. McLachlin insisted recently that Hong Kong’s courts remain independent, telling The Globe and Mail that “the court is doing a terrific job of helping maintain rights for people, insofar as the law permits it, in Hong Kong. Which is as much as our courts do.” That is farcical. This view is chilling and sounds like alarming relativism.
Surely someone of Ms. McLachlin’s legal acumen must understand that this will end badly. Why would Ms. McLachlin, now 80 years old and sitting atop a lifetime of achievement, risk such reputational harm and tarnish her celebrated legacy? Why can’t she bring herself to do the right thing and simply leave?
Two prominent British judges have already done so, after the release of a report last year warning about the collapse of judicial independence in Hong Kong. International scholars and lawyers, including former Canadian attorney-general and human-rights activist Irwin Cotler, signed onto that letter.
By stubbornly refusing to resign, Ms. McLachlin brings dishonour to her good name and to Canada. But as we enter a new year, let us hold onto the enduring belief that better angels may emerge, and that she will stand on the right side of history and step down from the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal without further delay.